Intrinsic Calculation For Pollard Banknote Limited (TSE:PBL) Shows Investors Are Overpaying

Yolanda Lovett

Tue, Jan 1, 2019, 11:51 AM

How far off is Pollard Banknote Limited (TSE:PBL) from its intrinsic value? Using the most recent financial data, I am going to take a look at whether the stock is fairly priced by projecting its future cash flows and then discounting them to today’s value. I will be using the discounted cash flows (DCF) model. It may sound complicated, but actually it is quite simple! Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model. Please also note that this article was written in January 2019 so be sure check out the updated calculation by following the link below.

See our latest analysis for Pollard Banknote

The calculation

I’m using the 2-stage growth model, which simply means we take in account two stages of company’s growth. In the initial period the company may have a higher growth rate and the second stage is usually assumed to have perpetual stable growth rate. To start off with we need to estimate the next five years of cash flows. For this I used the consensus of the analysts covering the stock, as you can see below. I then discount the sum of these cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate.

5-year cash flow forecast

	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
Levered FCF (CA$, Millions)	CA$35.26	CA$31.94	CA$32.87	CA$36.90	CA$41.42
Source	Analyst x3	Analyst x1	Analyst x1	Est @ 12.27%	Est @ 12.27%
Present Value Discounted @ 11.82%	CA$31.53	CA$25.55	CA$23.51	CA$23.60	CA$23.69

Present Value of 5-year Cash Flow (PVCF)= CA$128m

We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after the five years. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of the GDP. In this case I have used the 10-year government bond rate (2.3%). In the same way as with the 5-year ‘growth’ period, we discount this to today’s value at a cost of equity of 11.8%.

Terminal Value (TV) = FCF₂₀₂₃ × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = CA$41m × (1 + 2.3%) ÷ (11.8% – 2.3%) = CA$447m

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV) = TV / (1 + r)⁵ = CA$447m ÷ ( 1 + 11.8%)⁵ = CA$256m

The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next five years and the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is CA$384m. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. If the stock is an depositary receipt (represents a specified number of shares in a foreign corporation) then we use the equivalent number. This results in an intrinsic value of CA$14.97. Relative to the current share price of CA$20, the stock is rather overvalued and not available at a discount at this time.

TSX:PBL Intrinsic Value Export January 1st 19

Important assumptions

I’d like to point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. If you don’t agree with my result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. Because we are looking at Pollard Banknote as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighed average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation I’ve used 11.8%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.238. This is derived from the Bottom-Up Beta method based on comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.

Next Steps:

Valuation is only one side of the coin in terms of building your investment thesis, and it shouldn’t be the only metric you look at when researching a company. What is the reason for the share price to differ from the intrinsic value? For PBL, there are three important aspects you should look at:

Financial Health: Does PBL have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.
Future Earnings: How does PBL’s growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with our free analyst growth expectation chart.
Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of PBL? Explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!

PS. Simply Wall St does a DCF calculation for every CA stock every 6 hours, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here.

To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.

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